GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs Radeon HD 7950

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7950, which features a GPU core clock speed of 800 MHz, and 1536 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1250 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is made up of 1792 Stream Processors, 112 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		47 Watts
Radeon HD 7950		200 Watts
	Difference: 153 Watts (326%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7950 should be 971% quicker than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950		240000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 217600 (971%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 is much (more or less 937%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950		89600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 80960 (937%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 is quite a bit (approximately 493%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21280 (493%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.